As he wondered about how the people freed from the eternals’ machinations lived their lives if nothing they did left a permanent mark on the world, he walked by two people that stood out from the rest like deer among a flock of sheep. Robes and full armor had cemented themselves in Elach’s mind as what practitioners wore, but these two wore suits dyed a shimmering black with accents that glimmered like gemstones cut from ice on their cuffs, buttons, and collars. They couldn’t be practitioners with that kind of getup, and yet nobody but practitioners were confident enough to walk around with their wealth showing so blatantly like that. The first woman yawned and brough the back of a white gloved hand to their mouth as snapping sounded from behind them, the crowd of people that had turned their attention to them evaporating as reality righted itself. The second woman honed in on Elach when the people around him disappeared, leaving him all alone in the middle of the tunnel on a collision course with the two well-dressed women.

Trying to act as casual as possible, Elach dipped his head in greetings as the women approached; the one on the right, with the long hair that looked coated in frost with eyebrows and lashes that looked frozen on nodded in return. And, meeting both Elach’s greatest hopes and worst fears, the other one lightly tapped her partner on the shoulder to get her to stop. They were going to confront Elach. Possibilities raced through his mind as the two women exchanged hushed words; did they think he was an intruder? Here to steal, or hurt, whatever was precious to them? Or, much less likely due to their features, were they tourists happy to meet another person freed from the eternals? One option led to a confrontation at best, and the other a nice conversation at worst. Elach put down an anchor far down the tunnel as he smiled at the two women, ready to pull himself away to safety if everything went to shit.

“We haven’t been informed that someone would be using this entrance today. What business do you have here?” The woman with lips that seemed to be carved from cloudy, frosted crystals and hexagonal irises that Elach wasn’t able to make out from further away asked. That eliminated the option that they were tourists.

Elach plastered on a smile that he wasn’t confident in. “Elach, and it’s a pleasure to meet you….” He trailed off, leaving space for the two women to fill in on their own.

“Arvay. And this is Brynn.” Arvay, the woman with frozen eyelashes and frostbitten hair answered, her speech less formal and more curt than her partner’s. Not impolite, just to the point. “Who do you represent?”

Elach held his polite smile, but he was cursing up a storm on the inside. He couldn’t fool someone who was aware of the world he was trying to get into, especially not when he knew nothing about said world.

“I’m not representing anybody.” Elach admitted. It was the truth, but from the looks on Arvay and Brynn’s faces and the way their postures shifted they didn’t buy it. “I’m pretty new to all this stuff, so I took a name from the person who helped me out and found my way here.”

“You took the name Elach from someone?” Brynn asked, clear yet frosted Issi forming into jagged spikes behind her that Elach did not want to see solidify.

“Not Elach. That was given to me by my parents.” He held out his hands in front of him to try and show he meant no harm. “My full name is Elach Follow.” And that was it. He’d cemented his last name as Follow. “Great job, Elach.” He muttered to himself as the two women shared a murmur of their own, most likely trying to put a face, blade, or building to the name he’d given them.

“Did you just pick a random word for your name?” Arvay asked. She seemed more amused than enraged, which was probably a good sign.

“Maybe.” Elach answered sheepishly.

“Well, you’re stuck with it now, so congratulations Mr. Follow.” Arvay laughed, motioning past Elach and towards the lift. “We were just going out for a walk, but now we can’t. You’re coming with us.”

Elach felt the temperature around him drop drastically as the air started to freeze around him, and he pulled on his anchor. Arvay and Brynn slid past him as the tunnel zipped by, and the moment he reached his anchor Elach summoned another one and pulled again. He left the other two in the dust, but after his second pull something cracked inside of him. It was like a dam burst open, and all of the power he’d been enjoying emptied out and was greedily devoured by all of his bodily functions. He only managed to summon his next anchor twenty feet away at maximum, and he moved about twice as fast as his top speed while running when he pulled himself. He placed an anchor directly behind him and pushed, much to the same effect except he had a little less control over which direction he went. That would be useful for dodging attacks, not so much for running away as fast as possible. He even felt his own Issi draining far faster than before. He was almost a quarter empty after just four pulls.

“The existential bleed must’ve run out.” Elach huffed as he ran, not willing to waste the rest of his Issi until he felt like he was in danger again. His foot slipped out from under him and he created an anchor a foot or two off the ground, pulling himself to it so he could have a moment to readjust his position. He stumbled as he landed, moving just a little bit faster than he’d expected. Because he’d been falling ever so slightly, he realized. That was too dangerous to use right now, but whenever his Issi strengthened his body he might be able to use that to great effect. His pulls and pushes didn’t alter his momentum at all, after all. And maybe he could find a way to redirect his momentum?

A claw of ice tearing up the rock just a few feet behind him snapped Elach back to reality, and the skeletal arm that followed it left long gouges in storefronts and homes that had to have caused at least one casualty. It reminded Elach of the battle that had raged outside Prisoner’s cell, a complete disregard for a loss of life because reality would simply correct itself to where the deaths hadn’t happened. But he still remembered the feeling of helplessness, the headaches and eternal pains that he’d been afflicted with for the crime of simply existing where those people decided to wage their war. And maybe that was because Flow had dissociated him just the smallest bit, but what if someone else around here was also dissociated? Would they have a pain they couldn’t explain, a hole in their memory that bothered them for years to come?

A family was trampled under the icy apparition’s warpath, blood and viscera flung haphazardly around the tunnel and splattering onto screaming passers-by that cowered as close to the tunnel's walls as they could. Nobody even attempted to attack Brynn or Arvay, whichever one was controlling that thing, since the moment they so much as noticed it they were put into a death-like trance that quickly snapped them back to their desired places as the apparition gained on Elach. The gouges in the tunnel popped out of existence, full walls of rock taking their place, now whole again so soon after they’d been destroyed. Did the phenomena work faster to correct something the more destructive it was? That would explain how he died so constantly in that forest.

Icy fingers curled into Elach’s vision, trying to wrap around him and capture him. Out of desperation he created an anchor at the edge of his range and pulled, feeling his body smash against the frigid fingers for a fraction of a second as they shattered into a thousand razor-sharp shards. That thing wasn’t made of ice, Elach realized as he hammered his eyes shut, his entire body sliced to ribbons as he pulled himself through the cloud of death. It was frosted glass.

As he fell to his knees bleeding from a thousand tiny cuts, Elach noted how easily he’d shattered the glass giant. And how it had still hurt, like punching a bag overfilled with sand, but nowhere near as bad as he’d expected crashing through something that could tear ridges in stone. The air around him started to crystallize as the crunching of stone was swapped out for a pair of footfalls, and Elach closed his eyes as the cold seeped into his body.

“That could’ve gone better.” Elach groaned, leaning over the regular half of the fountain and staring at his reflection. “Probably should have done something with my hair and beard before I tried to go into a living city. They probably thought I was a vagabond or something, and that definitely didn’t help their view of me.”

Flow flapped down from their perch, landing on the edge of the fountain and dipping down to drink. With a sputtering noise Flow raised their head from the water, coughing up water in a very person-like fashion as they appeared to have drank too quickly.

“The water’s not going anywhere. Take all the time you need.” Elach said, patting Flow on the back as they shook and ruffled their feathers. Flow let out a series of peeps, chirps, and song-like notes in a long winded tirade before dunking their head completely under water. Elach blinked in surprise, taking a step to the side to give Flow their space. Now more than ever he wished he could understand them. All he could make out was worry and a little desperation from their tones, which meant Flow had at least an idea about what was going on outside.

Elach dipped his hand in the fountain and brought them to his mouth, sipping on the slightly sweet and sticky water as Flow flapped their wings to try and stay balanced.

“Is this the flower… water… stuff?” Elach asked himself, staring at the giant stone flower just in front of him. “Nectar, that’s what it’s called. Of course it is. How didn’t I notice that sooner?”

The nectar settled into his stomach with a warm and comfortable weight, and Elach felt it trying to make its way to his container. His Issi recovered at a snail’s pace compared to what his parents had explained to him, but as the nectar very slowly diffused through to his container he felt his Issi start to pour back in from the void.

“So I don’t regenerate Issi quickly, but this stuff forces it to regenerate.” Elach said as he raised another palmful to his lips, drinking in its flavor and the warming sensation as it got to his stomach. And so he took another sip. And another. And another. But his sixth sip just wouldn’t go down. It was like there was an invisible barrier on his throat preventing him from drinking any more.